Directory of Technical Assistance for Land Revitalization

9.0 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)

The mission of the HUD is to provide a decent, safe, and sanitary home and suitable living environment for every American, including the following:

Creating opportunities for homeownership

Providing housing assistance for low-income persons

Working to create, rehabilitate and maintain the nation's affordable housing

Enforcing the nation's fair housing laws

Helping the homeless

Spurring economic growth in distressed neighborhoods

Helping local communities meet their development needs

HUD administers a loan and a grant program that can be used to assist in brownfields redevelopment. The Section 108 guaranteed-loan provision of the CDBG program is one of the most potent and important public investment tools that HUD offers to local governments. It allows them to transform a small portion of their CDBG funds into federally guaranteed loans large enough to pursue physical and economic revitalization projects that can renew entire neighborhoods. Such public investment is often needed to inspire private economic activity, providing the initial resources or simply the confidence that private firms and individuals may need to invest in distressed areas.

The BEDI grant program is administered to stimulate and promote economic and community development activities under Section 108(q) of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, as amended. BEDI is designed to assist local governments in returning abandoned, idled and underused industrial and commercial facilities to productive economic uses by providing grants to identified private sector parties committed to undertaking projects and activities that will provide near-term results and demonstrable economic benefits, such as job creation and increases in the local tax base.

BEDI funds are used as stimulus for local governments and private sector parties to commence redevelopment or continue phased redevelopment efforts on brownfields sites where expansion or development is complicated by the presence or potential presence of environmental contamination.

The remainder of this section provides profiles for the following HUD-related organizations: